FBI recovers buried secret files

Regan is serving life in prison, having escaped the death penalty

United States investigators have dug up thousands of secret documents buried across Washington by the convicted spy Brian Regan.

A law enforcement agency has described the material as "pretty explicit information" which "would be very damaging if it fell into the wrong hands," the Washington Post reports.

The files, collected by Regan when he served as an intelligence analyst in the US Air Force, give details about spy satellites and US early warning systems, officials say.

A list of the material written in code and a map of a park where some of the files were buried was found in Regan's cell before his January trial.

Officials have reportedly said they believe he planned to sell the information to Iraq and three other unidentified countries described as hostile to the US.

The existence of such sensitive material was only hinted at during Regan's trial.

'Fantasy spy'

Investigators were anxious to find all the documents quickly in case an unfriendly government began its own digging operation.

Regan, 40, a married father of four from Maryland, was said to be in debt and hoping to raise money from the sale of the stolen files. He is serving a life sentence.

His lawyers had argued that his attempts to sell secrets to Iraq and China were unsuccessful and that he was engaged more in fantasy than in real espionage.

When he was arrested at Washington's Dulles airport in August 2001, he was carrying a global positioning system device that could be used to mark precise locations in remote areas.

Officials believe all the documents have been recovered, said Rick Oborn, spokesman for the National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the country's spy satellites.